


Judged by Grace

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Old West, POV Chris Larabee, POV Vin Tanner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-01
Updated: 2005-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love, pain, and the whole damn thing: pondering the divide between what outsiders think and what insiders know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Judged by Grace

Vin Tanner squinted against the harsh sunlight as he looked toward the woods beyond the far end of the corral. The flash of movement he'd seen in the corner of his eye proved to be what he'd expected. He caught only a glimpse of an ungainly grayish-white form at the tree line before it awkwardly humped back into cover. He sighed inwardly, concern warring with puzzlement. He uncapped the canteen and slanted a look down at his companion.

"Figured you'd've taken care of that critter by now."

Chris Larabee didn't look away from the fence rail he was binding with wire. Vin drank, resisting the usual urge to spit out the tepid, greasy water after he'd moistened his mouth. Chris tapped a last nail home and rose from his squat. His undershirt was stained brown with sweat and dust, and strands of sweat-darkened hair clung to his forehead. He shoved his bare left forearm up over his face, pushing his hair back; the finer hairs on his arm shone golden as they caught the light. He shook his head at the offer of the canteen. Vin screwed on the cap, looking again to the woods, now blank of presence.

"I could do it right now."

"No."

Chris was doing a visual check of the mended fence and still didn't look up. Vin studied his face, hoping Chris would meet his eyes, give him some idea of why he was behaving in this unsettling way toward an animal every right-minded person knew needed to be put out of its misery. He'd never thought of Chris as either a cruel or a sentimental man. The rift in what he'd thought he knew about Chris made him uneasy, like solid ground under his feet suddenly shaking and crazing the hardpan with cracks a man might fall into. He couldn't grasp why Chris wouldn't just get on and do the proper thing. Of all the men he'd known in his life, Chris more than any other was one he fundamentally believed would always do the right thing, even if the path that took him on was the thorniest.

Chris must have his reasons for not wanting to slaughter the animal himself, but Vin couldn't see any reason why Chris wouldn't let him do it. This was the second time he'd offered, and the second flat and plain no he'd gotten in response.

He hesitated, glanced again at the trees, before making up his mind to speak. "I reckon it needs to be done."

Only the hum of crickets and the croak of a Chihuahua raven winging overhead broke the silence. Vin rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. Hell, it wasn't his business what Chris did on his own land or what private why and wherefore he might have for letting an animal's torment continue. Given Chris didn't appear to want to share his thinking, Vin had to reckon he'd been given the message loud and clear to keep his nose out. He tried to shrug away his uneasiness, turning to take his coat from the fence and putting it on.

"I'd best get on back to town. Promised Casey another lesson in rope throwing when she got done with her chores." He smiled at Chris's inquiring look. "She's keeping it a secret from JD. I figure she's planning on showing him up when she's ready."

Chris laughed. "That McCormick Brothers cowboy show that come through give her the notion?"

"I reckon." He held out his hand. Chris gripped his arm and Vin closed his fingers around the wiry forearm in return. He held the clasp a few seconds longer than usual, trying to ground himself with the feel of the familiar hard warmth and the soft prickle of hairs against his palm and the reminder this was still Chris, no matter how peculiar and unexpected he was acting about that dog.

When Vin was mounted, Chris looked up at him. "Thanks for the help."

Vin looked over the shack with its pale new timbers patching the walls the Nichols brothers had shot full of holes. "It's coming along good. I wasn't sure you'd bother to fix it up; guess you are settling in for the long haul, after all."

It seemed unlikely the seven of them would keep riding together for years, but he found unexpected pleasure in having a rough map of the next little while.

"I dunno about settling. Mostly it's just something to keep busy with; and it stops me from shooting something in town just to get some peace and quiet."

Vin lifted his eyes to the wilderness crowding the edges of the small valley. "Know what you mean. That tracking job last week probably kept me from strangling one of them sheepherders that can't hold their liquor."

Chris grinned. "Oh, yeah, I know the feeling. Watch your back."

Vin tipped his hat and reined his horse away. The pump sounded in the yard behind him and he figured Chris would call it a day soon. It stayed light late this time of the year, but Chris had put in a hard day's work.

As he reached the end of Chris's parcel of land, he couldn't stop himself from glancing to the woods a final time. He glimpsed no movement, no pale shape in the dark trees, before he passed out of viewing range. He knew the creature was still in there, though; hell, every resident in the area knew what was happening. Nobody liked what was going on with the dog any more now than most of them had before, but a man was king on his own land.

That'd been the problem all along. Everyone had known Bob Denney was a useless sluggard who overworked his stock and drank himself into a mean temper by noon every day. He'd've beaten his wife and kids if he had any. Some people claimed he'd had a wife once, before he came to the territory, and she'd run off from his abuse. Didn't matter if it was true or not; people were mostly just glad he didn't have any family to light into. It would have made ignoring what went on out at the Denney farm even harder.

Denney was in the area only a few weeks before talk about his treatment of his dog was on everybody's lips. Vin saw the creature up close himself once, when the unrest in town made Chris decide to ride out and check up on matters and Vin backed him up. The dog was on a short chain anchored to a tree, which is where it spent its entire life, far as they could tell. It was some kind of a mixed breed, with the head and ears of a lab, but the longer hair of a collie. The bone-colored hair was a matted, mud-clotted mess. It was raining the day they went out. The animal on its two-foot chain alternately lunged toward them and cringed back, snarling and whining in turn, like a mad thing that didn't know what it was meant to do. Slivers of bones the dog had eaten to the last bits gleamed pale in the filth at the base of the tree that was soggy from more than a downpour; not even the clean scent of rain could overpower the stink of piss and shit. An untouched bone with strings of gristle on it sat in the mud just beyond the animal's reach. Between lunging toward them, it made feints at the bone only to be dragged up short each time with a whimper before turning its one runny eye on them again.

Vin suspected the creature'd been making those painful, futile lunges for a long time, and that the bone was deliberately placed exactly where it was.

The dog's ribs showed stark as a skeleton under the clumped hair. Even with the restricted movement available to it, its awkwardness was apparent. Its legs were crooked, and the back left one dragged. A glance was enough to see those legs came from broken bones that had just been left to set any way they could. Years of bones being broken, from the look of it, and likely not just the limbs but ribs and other bones. Its back was hunched from more than just defensive behavior.

Its left eye was missing, the socket a black, scarred hole. Fresh blood striped its flank, the hide recently scored by something sharp like a belt buckle.

Chris had given the animal a long measuring look. Vin remembered that look. He'd summoned up the memory of it repeatedly in the couple of weeks since Denney had finally drunk himself to death and the dog escaped its would-be rescuers--only to surface at Chris's place a few days later. Chris had looked at the creature that first time, chained to Denney's tree, with barely controlled fury. He hadn't looked away until the cabin door opened and Denney came out blustering and waving a shotgun. Then Chris had switched his cold gaze to Denney and it was made up of pure disgust and loathing.

Vin remembered that look with the clarity of a target in his sights. He'd been clinging to the memory of it like a child to a doll, prizing it for the reassurance it gave him. Out at Denney's place, Chris had reacted exactly the way Vin would've expected him to if someone had painted that type of situation as a what-if. Chris's anger and disgust made the atmosphere of that cool spring day plunge to the chill of a January deep-freeze. Vin had wanted to shoot both Denney and the creature he'd taken his meanness out on; two well-placed bullets to rid the world of a useless human being and deliver an animal from an existence that wasn't worth living.

He'd been certain Chris felt the same impulse. Chris might even once have acted on it, back in his wilder days. He had no trouble imagining Chris being just deliberately antagonistic and needling enough to raise Denney's hackles so the drunken bastard would stupidly raise that shotgun with deadly intention. Chris might even have let Denney get off a shot before drilling him; Chris worked according to his own rules, made up partly of an odd sense of fairness and partly, Vin reckoned, a delight Chris took in tempting the Devil to nail him if he could.

Chris's personal code was still part of all he did, inseparable from the man he was, but it was muddled up now with being a lawkeeper. Like the rest of them, he sometimes had to do things he didn't much like; things that didn't always come naturally.

Though, as far as he'd seen, it didn't come naturally to most people in Four Corners not to do something about Denney's dog. When word spread about the creature's state, a few folk didn't care one way or another, but a whole lot more got themselves worked up. Problem was, the dog was kept on Denney's land and Denney owned the land outright, had the deed and didn't owe the bank a cent. As long as he kept the dog on his land, no one had a right to interfere and Denney could shoot anyone who tried--and he'd taken up shooting first and yelling second after he and Chris visited.

To make it worse, the damn dog barked to raise the dead whenever anyone approached the cabin; nobody could get close enough to put it out of its misery without its calling Denney's attention to them before they got a chance.

Ezra said the situation was "ironic"; Vin called it fucking twisted.

If it'd been a woman or child Denney was beating, Chris would have taken it away and damned to Denney's rights. Vin had no doubt of that even if the law did say a man owned his wife and kids. Chris wouldn't have stepped aside.

But it was just a dog. No call for treating a dumb creature like that, but it was a dog, not a person, and the seven of them had no more right to go onto a man's land when he wasn't breaking any laws than anybody else did. Mary wrote a ripsnorter of an editorial about the standards of decent behavior and the need to uphold them in their community, which Josiah read aloud with relish while they sat in the sun on the boardwalk. But Mary knew better than to head out there with a gun herself and, after Denney scared off a few youngsters and hotheads who tried to get close enough to shoot the dog--none of them being marksman enough to do it from a distance--the matter dwindled into nothing but outraged blather. Talk didn't do a bit of good. The only possible good for the creature would be a bullet between the eyes and anyone with a lick of sense knew it.

So matters stayed as they were for weeks, disturbing and unsatisfying, but with no remedy. Denney came into town every week or so for supplies, usually half-corned. He was surly and brazen at the same time. He used the whip too hard on the underfed horse that pulled his buckboard, but not enough to make the creature founder. He ignored everybody, got his foodstuffs and a stock of liquor and left, uncaring of his reception, but suspicious of every look. His visits made folks uneasy with the reminder of what was happening a few miles away from their respectable little town.

Chris avoided Denney, retreating to the saloon or the jailhouse, or out of town to his shack, if he caught sight of him. Vin speculated Chris wasn't entirely sure he'd stop himself doing something drastic if he had to confront the man again. They all dealt with the ugly situation the best they could.

"You know, when he comes into town, we could go out to his place and take care of the dog." JD had looked around the saloon table at each of them, scanning for support.

Nathan sighed and, like JD, kept his voice a murmur below the rumble of the patrons. "Sure. A couple of us could do that. For that matter, Vin could've done it any time without setting off the dog or alerting Denney. Chris could probably do it, too. He ain't as good with a rifle as Vin, but he's accurate with his Colt even at a distance. They could've killed the animal and been clean away before Denney even came out of his house."

JD frowned first at Vin, then at Nathan. "You're real good with your knives, too, Nathan. You could probably kill it with a knife throw from as far away as Chris or Vin could shoot it. I'd bet a double eagle you could." He looked at Ezra, who avoided his eyes.

"There's no profit in betting on a sure thing." Ezra downed his shot of whiskey and signaled a bargirl for another.

JD looked at each of them as the silence stretched to painful proportions until impatience tipped him over the edge. "Then why in blue blazes are we sitting here--"

"JD." Buck's quiet voice stopped JD short. "What do you think Denney would do if we killed his dog?"

"I don't know. Yell a lot, probably. Wave that stupid shotgun of his around. Maybe he'd threaten to call in the law--except we're the law! Maybe he'd wire the Judge. Hell, we could handle anything he tried to do. I don't see no reason why--"

"He'd get another one. And he'd treat it just the same. A man like that needs something to hurt. He can't hurt his stock as much as he'd like to because the animals wouldn't be able to work. They wouldn't be useful to him. But the dog's whole purpose is just to be there for him to wallop. So, yeah, we could take it out; we could've done that a long time ago. But do you want to think of a new puppy being treated like that? At least that dog out there knows what to expect. It probably ain't ever known nothing different since it was a pup."

JD had ducked his head, his dark hair falling forward to screen his face. "It ain't right," he'd whispered.

Vin snorted as he reined in at the livery in Four Corners and dismounted. Hell of a lot of things in this life ain't right, kid, and ain't that the truth. And the worst thing that hadn't been right about that situation was having to force themselves not to do anything. It would almost have been easier if it had been a wife Denney was beating. Not that any of them would have wished that on any woman, not even for five minutes, but if it had been a woman, they'd've taken her away despite the law if she'd given even the slightest indication she wanted help. It would've solved matters, at least for a time, since Denney wouldn't have been able to replace her as readily as he could a dog.

And even a beaten-down wife would have something left to claim in her. She'd need a bushel of help to do it, but she'd be able to pick up the pieces of her existence and fit them together into a new life for herself.

Given the festering discontentment gripping the town, it was hardly a surprise when Denney's dropping dead a couple of weeks ago sparked widespread satisfaction. The burden of angry helplessness lifted from most of the townsfolk like the sun breaking through clouds. Of course, then some sentimental fools had decided to try to help the dog, which in their idiot minds didn't mean shooting it.

If the seven of them hadn't been away at the time, the situation would never have come up. They were in Eagle Bend, investigating jointly with the sheriff a murder on the jurisdictional border between the towns. Well, he, Chris, and Nathan had been investigating. Ezra had gone along for a change of gambling table, Buck for a change of female entertainment, Josiah for a change from fixing the church, and JD because he suspected Casey was keeping a secret from him and was determined to show her he didn't care no matter what lengths he had to go to to din the message home. By the time they got back, the dog had escaped the do-gooders who thought they'd rehabilitate the creature with kindness and pity. It savaged the leg of one of the fools, took a chunk out of the hand of another, and limped its hunchbacked way into the woods before any of their tardy, and probably wildly ill-aimed, bullets found it.

The town dumped Denney in a grave, left it to Mary and JD to try to find any next of kin to notify, and rescued his stock. That seemed to be the end of an ugly page in the town's history--until the dog was glimpsed skulking around the edges of various farms. People had hoped it would die in the woods; alone, the way dogs like to do, the most mercy it'd likely had in its life. It was almost certainly too damaged to fend for itself. It knew nothing about hunting and it was too physically broken to manage, anyway. By rights, left to itself, it should have died days ago.

No one could get close to it when it was first sighted. It haunted the wilderness on the town's fringes and between farms, its pale form like a spectral reminder of their collective failure to end its torment when they'd had their chance. Then it settled in one place, in the woods on Chris's land, and the town relaxed. Vin relaxed, too, when he first saw it there, the tight feeling in his chest loosening. Chris would take care of the animal the way it needed to be done.

Except Chris didn't. When Vin realized Chris wasn't going to handle it, he'd offered and been silently ignored. He knew Chris well enough to know a refusal when he didn't hear one. He'd gotten the message loud and clear over the past eight days. Still the dog lingered in its painful existence, no use to itself and nothing salvageable in the witless creature.

Vin ran a hand over the gleaming side of his gelding and put away the brush. He stretched his aching back carefully, twisting from side to side, before leaving the stall and going out the back door of the livery. Casey would be along soon; he'd soap his gear later, if his muscles weren't seized up after the rope throwing.

He'd swear on his honor Chris knew there wasn't anything in that dog to save, that no amount of kindness now could change what it knew of life. It wasn't mercy to leave it living in what had to be constant pain and probably a veil of terror and confusion. Its mind was gone, as half-blinded as its vision, broken with its bones who knew how many years ago. It wasn't dangerous to people if left alone; it was too frightened to get close to anyone. It was just a mass of suffering, in its head and its body both.

People muttered now about Chris's cruelty in not taking care of it, but nobody dared venture on his land. Even the fools were sensible enough not to trespass on land belonging to a gunman with Chris's reputation and prickly regard for his privacy.

Mary didn't write another editorial, but she spoke her mind to Chris with her habitual directness soon after word got around the dog was living on Chris's land. Vin was present. Chris had simply tipped his hat to her and walked away. Mary had looked at Vin and he'd had nothing but a shrug to offer her. Chris had to have a reason for acting the way he was, and it was bound to be a damned good one; his belief Chris was as different from Denney as it was possible for a man to be didn't falter despite Chris's present behavior. Vin just didn't happen to know what that reason was. Even if he had known, he wouldn't have talked about it since Chris apparently didn't want Mary to know, no more than he was willing to talk to the rest of them.

He didn't have any better understanding of the situation when Conklin sounded off, either, no more than Buck, JD, and Nathan had come up with any way to explain matters to any of the complainers or, best he could tell, to themselves. Nobody had an answer when Mrs. Potter hesitantly voiced concern, and even less to say when Billy Travis looked across the street at his hero with confused betrayal in his young eyes. Josiah just rambled about God moving in a mysterious way and Ezra wasn't talking much to anyone recently, spending more than his usual amount of time holed up in the saloon intent on one game after another.

No one other than Mary broached the matter openly to Chris, at least that Vin had seen. The mutterings were behind his back and to the rest of them, as though they could influence Chris one way or another or had some special knowledge they weren't sharing.

The only thing Vin knew was the dog was staying on Chris's land not only because it wasn't being shot at or harassed there, but because it was being fed. He'd seen the signs: the gnawed bones, the scuffed dirt just in front of the tree line a few yards beyond the corral. The paw prints were distinctive, with a furrow crossing them where the back leg dragged. He just couldn't, for all he tried, wrap his mind around what Chris was hoping to do by keeping that animal alive.

He couldn't stop worrying at the problem, like sticking his tongue onto an aching tooth.

An hour later, after finishing the lesson with Casey behind the Chinese laundry, an area JD never thought of venturing into, Vin was heading to the restaurant for supper when he saw Buck stretched out in a chair outside the jail. He detoured across the street. Buck's arms were folded over his chest, his hat was tipped over his eyes, and his long legs were stretched across the boardwalk with his boots propped on the rail. Vin settled into the chair next to him. The late afternoon sun dappled the roof of the Gem across the street, but the overhang of the jailhouse roof bathed them in welcome shade.

Vin looked around to take a measure of the street. Suppertime was generally quiet, and today was no exception. It was as private as they were likely to get, but he kept his voice pitched low nonetheless.

"Chris ain't took care of that dog yet."

Buck didn't stir, but his eyes, which had opened to slits at Vin's arrival, opened wider and settled somewhere in the vicinity of his sand-scarred boots. He might not be willing to talk yet, but he was listening.

Vin stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. "I can't figure it. It just don't add up to the man I know--and I damned well know I know him, so I just get back around all the time in my thinking to not being able to figure out what's going on. So I been wondering if he had a dog back sometime when you knew him. Maybe there was something that happened to it that's made Chris feel like...." He frowned, searching for the words to describe a feeling he couldn't quite put a finger on. "I know he must have a damned good reason for acting like this. Like maybe the dog reminds him of something to do with his...with his family? Or maybe from when he was a kid?"

Buck sighed, long and lush. Vin relaxed into his chair, watching as a little girl emerged from the alley opposite into the street rolling her hoop around tumbleweeds while her quick little booted feet stirred up dust devils. As she passed, she gave them a gap-toothed smile and waved her free hand. Vin touched the brim of his hat with a smile.

"Hey, darling," Buck called, straightening at last. He set his feet down on the boardwalk, sighed again, and pushed his hat back. "There wasn't a dog at the ranch. I recall Chris and Sarah talking about maybe getting a pup for Adam, since he was about old enough to look after one himself, but it hadn't happened yet."

Well, he'd figured it wouldn't be that easy. It wasn't like he'd really believed anything that might have happened to a dog could matter alongside what happened to Chris's family. He waited to see if Buck had anything he was prepared to share.

Buck stood and stretched, the smell of sweat from his lifted arms reminding Vin he was probably as ripe himself after his work with Chris, then Casey. A good scrub in the river at dawn tomorrow would start the day off right.

"I been thinking back over all the years I've known him," Buck said at last, "things I seen and things he's mentioned, but I can't make sense of what he's doing with that dog. He's never done nothing like this before, not with a dog or horse or any animal. Chris just ain't no sentimental fool, and he ain't cruel, neither. Probably only JD out of the seven of us never come across someone like Denney before, but you just deal with that crap when you meet it, if you get a chance, and live with it the best way possible if you don't. I seen Chris shoot more'n one horse because he had to. Doing it to one of 'em in particular hurt him for more reason than it being a good mount, but he did it right off when he saw it couldn't be saved so it didn't suffer longer. He ain't no different that way from any decent man. Shit, get right down to it, Chris is more decent than most."

Buck leaned against the railing, the long slanting rays behind him haloing his head. His face was shadowed, but puzzlement was clear in his voice.

"Chris don't shoot nobody in the back and he don't let animals suffer for no reason, neither. But I have no idea what that reason could be, no matter how I think about it."

Nope, not easy at all.

Vin stood and inclined his head toward the restaurant. Buck nodded and they stepped down into the street together.

:::::::

Chris placed a pair of meaty bones on a tin plate. He added several generous pieces of raw meat and put the plate at the end of the table. Setting the rest of the antelope strips aside with a cloth over them, he poured biscuit mixture into a pan and put it on the stove. Too damned hot to cook, but it was either that or eat cold beans from a can. He pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead, welcoming the breeze that passed through the open front and back doors as shadows lengthened across the floor from the west window.

To hell with it. He pulled his damp undershirt off over his head and tossed it into a corner. Wasn't likely he was going to shock anyone's sensibilities going bare-chested way out here on a Thursday evening; that was one of the reasons he'd got himself a place outside town: a retreat from crowds and bustle and noise, but also from expectations, watchful eyes, and the conventions of behavior people like Mary saw as crucial to a civilized environment. She was probably right, but he had only so much tolerance for being harped at by people who should keep their noses out of his business.

It was different when Sarah and the boy were alive. He'd had reasons then to be patient with social demands. Even without Sarah's influence, his desire to build a safe place in the community for his family had settled him down better than any amount of rock salt from Hank Connelly's shotgun.

All of them were gone now, Hank as well as his girl and the grandson Hank never saw. He'd failed to protect all three of them.

He sprawled into a chair in the breeze from the front door and stretched out his legs. The first nightjar calls traveled faintly on the evening air from the woods. He rolled a cheroot without looking at it, staring through the door at the trees behind the corral. A shadowed sanctuary for a creature beyond hope. No one would touch it while it was on his land; his reputation had that much use. He understood the general uneasiness at the animal's lingering, and he sure to hell didn't fault people for caring. The town had decent folk in it, which is what made it worth protecting and made living among them a better feeling than he'd had since losing his family.

That didn't make him feel any more tolerant about repeated attempts to make him do what other people wanted when it wasn't a matter of town business or lawkeeping. Sarah would have counseled patience and he understood the need, but he didn't have it in him these days. He wished the whole damned situation hadn't ever come up, that the dog hadn't survived and sure as hell had never found its way onto his land, but it was here and his to deal with, not anybody else's. He didn't give a rat's ass if people painted him like Denney; his reputation wouldn't notice another black mark among those it'd acquired in the newspaper articles Mary had in her files and he didn't have a family for it to affect. While he appreciated Mary not writing another article to add to it despite her warm feelings on the matter, he knew what people thought about the situation without them bringing it up. He just didn't have anything he could say to them in return, and it wasn't words that were needed, anyway.

He looked aside at the sound of hoofbeats. When his horse in the corral whickered a friendly greeting to the newcomer, he got up. Striking a match on the stove, he lit the cheroot and clamped it between his lips, then turned the biscuits over. He dumped a chunk of lard in the fry pan and followed it with the strips of antelope. He stirred the meat until it was covered in grease and sizzling, and emptied a can of Boston baked beans over it. A last stir and he sat down again. He took the cheroot from his mouth and spat out a bit of tobacco.

Staccato footsteps on the porch heralded Ezra's arrival. He came in carrying a bottle and plunked it on the table, then paused, his eyes caught on the plate holding the bones and raw meat. He blinked and his mouth moved, but he didn't speak, just sighed and shifted his gaze to Chris. Chris tilted his head up to meet Ezra's bloodshot, shadowed eyes. Ezra stared at him, his mouth still twitching, but finally shook his head and turned away without speaking. He hung his coat on a hook beside the door, plopped his hat over it, and returned to the table to pull the cork from the bottle. Chris reached over and snagged it as Ezra fetched two glasses from the shelf.

Highland Rye; the day was looking up. Chris's nostrils flared at the scent of the malt as he filled the glasses. "Rewarding day?"

He moved to sit at the other side of the table, away from the stove, as Ezra looked up from the fry pan and waved a spoon in the air, spattering hot grease. Preoccupation never helped Ezra's tendency to haphazard handling of utensils and it was best to be outside his line of fire.

Ezra stared at him for a few moments before catching up. His voice was a slower drawl than usual, like the pace of an overworked horse plodding its way home.

"Not precisely what I'd term lucrative, but not a complete waste of my time. A greenhorn arrived on the morning stage. He has all of the enthusiasm our Mr. Dunne displayed when he first joined us, but none of JD's--" he frowned and waved the spoon again; Chris watched a clump of beans drop to the dusty floor and made a bet with himself Ezra would step on them within thirty seconds "--sense?" A smile touched his mouth as he looked at Chris. "Can JD be said to have sense?"

Chris smiled back, holding the connection until Ezra's smile faltered and he turned back to the stove. Ezra wrapped a cloth around the handle of the fry pan and lifted it onto the table.

Chris stretched behind himself to the shelf for two plates and dished up the food. "Sense, I'm not sure about, but he's got a brain. If he continues shaping up, and Buck keeps him in line, he might live long enough to grow some sense to go along with it."

"Grow some sense." Ezra had moved to the open doorway. He was unbuttoning his vest, but staring outside. "Can anyone grow sense, do you think?"

Chris looked at Ezra's broad back, watching as his movements slowed until he was standing motionless. Chris grimaced and got up to turn the biscuits out onto a plate.

He didn't try to smooth out his voice. "Too late for some of us, I reckon." He topped up his glass and put the bottle down with a deliberate clunk, welcoming Ezra's flinch as he jolted back to the present.

"Too late indeed." Ezra turned inside, pulling off his vest with jerky motions. He hung it next to his coat and turned. He stared again at the bones on the plate before looking at Chris.

Chris turned his attention to his food, ignoring the heated gaze. He tore a biscuit apart, drawing in the steamy fragrance, and dipped it in the bean juice. Ezra sighed and slid into the chair opposite him.

"Haute cuisine a la Larabee again, I see. You spoil me, Chris. It's a wonder I can ever bring myself to eat the fodder that sorry excuse for a restaurant serves--and charges exorbitantly for, I might add--when I can dine on this distinctive fare in the salubrious surroundings of your charming...hut. Though I must allow that the standard of dress in this establishment, while it would hardly be considered acceptable in most venues, does have its own undeniable merit."

At least Ezra was making an effort to be normal, even if he was doing a piss-poor job of it. The weariness lacing Ezra's voice, making it a ghost of its usual expressive self, was like a hit on a bruised spot. It didn't take much prodding to get him to talk, however, which was an improvement over Ezra lost in brooding silence.

Once he'd set Ezra's tongue in motion, Chris tuned out his barbed commentary about the various individuals whose paths had crossed his that day and listened instead to Ezra's voice alone. It had the cadence of slow breathing, a rise and fall like waves lapping the beach of a Californio cove he'd visited during his stay on the coast years ago. It had the warmth of those Pacific waters, too, and the saltiness. Chris had never tired of going to that cove. He'd ridden that way every chance he could, leaving his horse ground-tied at the top of the cliff and walking down to the shore. Each time he'd gone, the waters had been different, sometimes whipped to dancing whitecaps, other times undulating with the long, slow movement of a dormant giant's breath. If they reflected the cool grays and blues of a pre-storm sky on one visit, they might sparkle the next time with the greens of a dew-laden meadow, just as the evening sky above them could be leaden one day and fiery the next or any number of hues between.

And however the waters looked like at any moment might not be what they'd been a few hours earlier or could soon become. Calmness could mean the waves had nurtured the tiny crabs in a rock pool by washing food-rich water into the hollow; but it was just as possible they'd dashed the creatures to death during a rough night, the calmness merely the aftermath of a destructive storm. Changeable and deceptive, the ocean waves had been a constant lure to him.

The one thing those waves never were was dull with fatigue from the burden of a harsh weight.

Chris watched the play of emotions on Ezra's face as Ezra stabbed at the last bits of food on his plate and waved his fork around to make a point Chris had lost track of. Ezra probably seemed pretty much the same as usual to most people, maybe even to his friends. Chris leaned back in his chair and lit a cheroot, narrowing his eyes against the smoke that spiraled up, but not looking away from Ezra's swift changes of expression. The familiar voice continued to roll over him like a briny tide, teeming with life, full of mystery, uncertainty, and hidden dangers.

Ezra looked up abruptly and their eyes locked. Ezra stopped talking and expression fled his face, leaving it raw and stark with the lines of pain and worry carved into it like tooled leather. Chris reached for Ezra's pain, as he'd been doing for the past eight days, trying to ease it the only way he could. He gathered all his warmth and support and smiled.

Ezra's eyes roamed over his face for several moments, then he blinked hard and looked down. He licked his lips and laid his fork neatly on his plate. He glanced aside before finally looking up with a valiant smile of his own.

"I see you've been paying your usual flattering degree of attention to me."

Chris widened his smile into a grin.

"Why I waste my time and talents trying to entertain an ingrate...." Ezra managed to keep smiling back at him for a few seconds before it fell away. Ezra bowed his head, resting his hands on his thighs.

Dark was fast closing in as the brief twilight waned. Chris got up and fetched the lantern from its hook. It wasn't too dark to see yet, but it would be soon. He could feel Ezra's tension soar like the panic of a netted sparrow. Ezra's sigh as he stood up was a barely discernible breath.

Ezra picked up the plate with the bones and raw meat on it. He waved away a bluebottle and scraped half the contents onto a second plate. He started to turn to the door, but paused and looked at Chris. The corners of Ezra's mouth twitched, but he didn't manage a smile this time and his voice was a grating husk without any of its usual honeyed smoothness. "I'll be back."

Chris nodded once, economically, firmly. "I'll be here."

Ezra nodded, turned on his heel, and strode out of the shack.

Chris dumped their plates in a bucket of water with a clatter and picked up the whiskey bottle. He went to stand in the doorway, fighting the churning in his gut as four-year-old memories of running his own gauntlet of helplessness, rage, and denial crowded his mind. He took a long drink and leaned against the jamb. Ezra was striding along the hard-baked path beside the corral. His horse shadowed him at a trot for a few yards inside the fence, but Ezra didn't turn his eyes from his goal ahead.

When the world was a storm of anguish and fury battering at a man, there wasn't much space left for anything but survival. He understood that bitching well enough. He took another drink of whiskey while keeping his eyes on the beacon of Ezra's white shirt in the dusk. Ezra stopped at the end of the corral. Without pausing, with one jerky movement, he flung the contents of the plate toward the trees. Ezra waited, then, as he did each time; a motionless, attentive figure staring into the woods, looking for whatever it was only he saw in this ritual. It was only a couple of minutes before his vigil was rewarded. All Chris could see was the ungainly lurch of a pale form as it lunged out of the woods, snapped up a bite of meat and flinched back, lunged out again for another and back, out and back. He was too far away to hear any snarling or whimpering it might be making, but he reckoned it'd be uttering some such sounds, judging by what he'd seen of it that day at Denney's place. Fear and want and fury and defensiveness seemed all a shambles in its confused brain.

Chris looked away from the broken shape--but it was the sight of Ezra's straight, rigid figure that made him close his eyes and turn inside.

Ezra returned shortly after Chris lit the lantern. He kicked the door shut behind him, dumped the plate in the bucket with the others, and stared evenly at Chris where he was seated across the table. Chris cocked his head, waiting to see how it would go this time. Ezra's lip curled in a crooked smile that showed a glint of gold and his hands went to his shirt buttons. He unfastened the porcelain buttons with quick fingers as he walked around the table and leaned over Chris in the chair. Ezra touched Chris's cheeks, then cupped his head in a firm hold with his fingers in Chris's hair. He leaned over, filling all of Chris's vision, lowering his head. Chris parted his lips, but instead of kissing him, Ezra turned his head at the last moment to trail his mouth along Chris's jaw and down the vein in the side of his throat. The scratch of Ezra's stubble against the sensitive skin on the underside of his chin and the hot, moist pressure of his lips quickened Chris's breath. He ran his hands inside Ezra's open shirt and slid them over his narrow waist and up his muscled back, pulling Ezra as close to him as their awkward positions allowed.

Ezra's mouth trailed fire to the join of his neck and shoulder and paused to lick. Chris tilted his head, expecting the fiery trail to continue around his throat. Instead, Ezra abruptly bit down, hard, his teeth clamping into the muscle. Chris swore and twisted away from the limpet mouth. He took hold of Ezra's waist, pushing him back as he stood up.

As soon as Chris gained his feet, Ezra shoved him back against the table with a force that jarred his tailbone. Ezra's grip on his arms offered neither gentleness nor quarter as he pushed Chris to a seat against the edge of the table, giving Ezra an advantage of height and leverage. Ezra hustled his body against Chris's, wedging his way between his legs until Chris slid them farther apart; Chris jerked at the press of hard, naked flesh as Ezra mated them together chest to chest. He could feel Ezra's heartbeat, the fast pump of it rhythmic as a hammer on anvil.

He'd swear he could feel the flow of the blood itself close under Ezra's skin, hot as rivulets of melted iron; hot as a lit fuse rushing across dry ground.

Ezra bit him again, hard enough to mark his shoulder, and his grip on Chris's wrists was bruising. Chris broke his arms free and pushed Ezra back; he tried to stand upright, but Ezra shoved him roughly against the table again. He gritted his teeth as Ezra nibbled the sparse flesh over his collarbone, one tiny sharp nip after another placed along the bone to the center of Chris's throat. Ezra licked his Adam's apple, nuzzled into the underside of his jaw, and grated his teeth along Chris's stubble. Aware a bite was likely in the offing, Chris moved his hands to Ezra's hips and pushed himself to his feet, pulling his throat out of reach. He bent his head, kissing a languorous trail down Ezra's temple, across his cheek, taking his time to establish a soothing pace as he worked his way toward Ezra's mouth.

Ezra bucked him off before he reached his goal and took hold of his arms again; insistent, driving, determined. He propelled Chris toward the bed, his mouth clamping on the pulse in Chris's throat for a dizzying moment before Ezra's teeth and lips were on the move again, working their painful, intoxicating way across his chest. He wouldn't be going bare-chested where anyone could see for a few days after tonight.

He let Ezra drive him backward toward the bed, trusting the strength in Ezra's grip not to let him fall, trusting Ezra to keep him from bashing into the hot stove or a chair or tripping. He still trusted Ezra's concern for him, buried as it presently was under frenzied despair. He concentrated on keeping Ezra's mouth and teeth from too tender areas of his body while he clung to shreds of coherency in the scorching desert wind of sensation licking over his flesh. Ezra was warm dampness of mouth and of sweat, arid heat of breath, and the unyielding solidity of muscle sheathed in softness like doeskin. The smell of Ezra's arousal was a rush of desire in the blood pounding in his head, making his vision narrow to the dark and pale of hair and skin as Ezra filled his vision.

Ezra had Chris's pants unbuttoned by the time they crossed the room. He let go of Chris long enough for both of them to strip off their boots and clothing, then they were on the move again.

The edge of the bed touched the back of his knees and Chris dug in, gripped Ezra, and turned him so they fell onto the bed with Ezra under him. The loosely strung ropes beneath the mattress gave with a bounce, but the frame creaked under their weight. He tried to gentle Ezra with the weight of his body, with caresses and murmurs and the touch of his mouth, the flick of his tongue. Ezra panted beneath him, moaned softly, and his eyes slid shut. His clutch on Chris's arms loosened.

Ezra's surrender lasted for only moments, then his eyes snapped opened, opaque with a desperate wildness. That was all the warning Chris got as Ezra growled and crooked a strong leg around the back of his thigh while Ezra's hands tightened again on his arms. Even expecting the move, Chris nevertheless grunted with the force as Ezra bucked his pelvis up, tightened his leg, and pushed Chris into a controlled but fast roll off him and flat onto his back. Ezra was straddling him before Chris caught his breath. Ezra grabbed his wrists, flattening Chris's hands to the pillow above his head, and his legs clamped like a vise on either side of Chris's hips. He lowered his head, mouth aiming again for Chris's throat like a falcon's swoop after prey.

Chris turned his head and yanked his shoulder up, using the bone to guard his throat. Ezra ducked his head lower, grazing his teeth along Chris's abused collarbone, nipping and sucking. He murmured deep in his throat a couple of times, but otherwise made no sound. Silence was unnatural around Ezra; it had hovered over them like a pall for days, only intermittently banished. Chris closed his eyes. He rode it out as Ezra ground their groins together with rough demand, but his eyes shot open as Ezra's teeth closed around his nipple and tugged with painful strength. Ezra's face was intent but distant, every ounce of his will absorbed into his search for oblivion in sexual heat.

Dammit.

Not again. He wouldn't be goaded into hurting Ezra; not this time. If it would help, he'd do it, but it wasn't any bitching use. He'd learned that well enough even if Ezra hadn't gotten it through his thick skull.

He twisted his right wrist free of Ezra's grip and surged upwards, wrapping his arm around Ezra while pulling his other arm free. He grunted at the jab of an elbow in his gut, but managed to block the knee heading for his crotch with his own quickly lifted leg.

_No._

Ezra's curved fingers raked down his chest, his nails gouging the skin. Chris growled in turn and grabbed Ezra's wrist. He feathered a kiss to the bloodied fingertips before pinioning the arm.

_No._

Ezra squirmed a foot free and kicked at him, trying to put him off balance. Chris wrenched back, twisting his body away, and his ass shot off the edge of the bed. He caught himself before he fell, hauled himself forward and pressed his weight over and down onto Ezra.

_No._

He manhandled the silently battling Ezra onto his side and held him immobile. He pressed himself against Ezra, head to head, chest to back, cock to ass, legs to legs. Ezra threw his head back; Chris evaded the attempted bash at his face, his longer length letting him wrap Ezra in the cocoon of his body.

_No._

"Enough." He spoke close to Ezra's ear, keeping alert for another head butt, and pitched his voice low. "Simmer down and I'll fuck you. I'll fuck you hard."

Ezra remained tense in his arms, but stopped fighting. Their joint breathing was a harsh rhapsody as Chris bent his head to press a trail of kisses down the plane of Ezra's shoulder blade. Ezra endured it for a few seconds as his breathing evened out, then thrust his ass back against Chris: imperative, commanding. A plea.

He let go of Ezra with one arm and spit into his hand. He gripped his cock, working the spit down it with long hard strokes. The tussle with Ezra hadn't taken the edge off his erection and his cock firmed immediately at the callused touch of his own fingers. He nudged the back of Ezra's thigh with his knee and Ezra bent his leg eagerly, arching his back to curve his buttocks up, impatience making his movements clumsy. Chris didn't waste time. He spit on his fingertips and massaged the entrance to Ezra's passage, then placed his cock in position and pushed inside without loosening him further.

Ezra stilled, but his eerie, disquieting silence continued. Chris had to read his body, but that was all right, the signs as familiar after their months of fucking as the feel of his own calluses. He ran his fingers over Ezra's chest, trying to stroke away the tension bunching Ezra's muscles. Ezra would ache tomorrow, though the strain in overstretched muscles would be the least of it.

Chris lipped along Ezra's shoulder as he fed his cock deeper into his body. He planted kisses on Ezra's first few vertebra before trailing back up his shoulder blade and around to the side of Ezra's neck. Ezra turned his head, offering his throat. He ignored Ezra's desire and nuzzled instead up the side of his face to his temple; he pressed his nose into Ezra's thick, sweaty hair as he rammed his cock the last couple of inches home.

Ezra whimpered low in his throat, the sound almost lost in their joint harsh breathing. Ezra bucked his hips back against him in demand for more. As Chris established a pounding rhythm of working the length of his cock in and out of Ezra, he lifted his head to study him. Ezra's body was a curved bow, his upper leg pulled up so his knee nearly touched his chest. His head was bent forward, baring the long stretched line of his nape, and his profile was outlined against the coarse white ticking on the pillow. Ezra's eyes were closed; a line of pain between them stitched his brows together. His mouth was open as he panted and his fair skin was flushed from his cheeks down to his nipples. His left hand was bunched in the sheet, tendons flexing as he tightened and loosened his grip in counterpoint, Chris realized, to the thrusts of his cock in Ezra's ass. Ezra's other hand was clenched around his own cock, whipping up and down it with savage jerks meant to hurt rather than pleasure.

Chris stroked his hand down Ezra's chest and over his trembling belly. He forced Ezra's hand away from his cock and took hold of it himself, ignoring Ezra's attempt to scratch his hand away.

"No." He rasped the denial into Ezra's ear and gritted his teeth, summoning the control to pause his fucking until Ezra stopped scratching at him. Ezra growled and pushed back against him once, but then held himself in check, quivering against Chris, waiting and wanting. Chris drew his cock out to the tip and shoved in hard enough to make Ezra grunt, and did it again and again as the bed creaked under them and Ezra's eyes squeezed shut while he gulped air.

Chris ran his thumb over the head of Ezra's penis, spreading the dampness from the slit and working the folds of the foreskin up and down until they tightened and smoothed away. He rubbed the head on each jerk and Ezra responded to the roughness of the skin on Chris's fingers as he always did, even when times were normal and he wasn't seeking pain as a distraction. Ezra clutched Chris's hand over his cock again as he came, but only to hold this time, not to command or hurt. Chris sucked in a breath as Ezra's fluid spurted warm and slippery over his fingers and Ezra's ass clenched his cock. He slid his hand off Ezra's penis and across his slick belly to clamp around his hip, holding Ezra in place as he rammed into his passage twice more and came in shuddering pulses that grayed his vision.

He dropped his head onto Ezra's sweaty shoulder as his muscles relaxed and a powerful, welcome weariness beckoned. He resisted its call, holding onto consciousness with the same tenacity he was holding Ezra close against him. The painful tightness of Ezra's muscles was diminished, but his stomach still quivered with tension under Chris's hand.

Ezra pushed back against him, peremptory again, moving away from the wet splashes of his seed on the blanket. Chris ringed the base of his cock and pulled it gently free, then shifted back to the edge of the bed, drawing Ezra with him until they lay, still on their sides, curved together like shells in the semblance of peacefulness that was the best they achieved these days. Ezra was still mute. If the pattern of the last week held, he'd remain silent. He'd trap himself in the dark swirl of his own thoughts, barring Chris's way to him with an even stronger imperative than his desperate attempts to drown himself in a sexual mindlessness he never seemed quite to manage, not with pain, not with tenderness. All Chris had been able to give him was physical exhaustion, but he counted it enough and gave it however he could.

Nothing to do but wait it out, like the creatures in the cove during a storm, and hope there'd be life to salvage at the end.

As Ezra quieted, Chris rested, the lantern light a pale glow through his eyelids. A breeze from the open back door cooled his sweated back and the distant hooting of an owl was a soothing accompaniment as he drifted. He surfaced to the feel of Ezra's fingers, gentle now, stroking the back of his hand where it was splayed against Ezra's abdomen. He rubbed his cheek against Ezra's mussed hair.

"I really have no choice, do I?" Ezra spoke with somber calm, but the alternating wildness and brittle numbness he'd displayed the past days was missing and Chris was immediately attentive.

He flattened his hand against Ezra's stomach. Dried semen flaked under his palm and he scratched lightly at it with his fingertips with Ezra's hand still warming the back of his.

"There's always choices. They just ain't always good ones."

Ezra snorted and his back muscles tensed against Chris's chest. "Oh, really? What choice did you have when your family was killed? Tell me, Chris, what choices were there when you arrived home and found your family burned to smoldering ashes?"

Chris froze. Silence hung between them, cold and stark as frost, then Ezra shuddered and fastened his fingers around Chris's wrist in a tethering grip. Warmth spread up Chris's arm from the unyielding clasp, slowly thawing him. As tension leached from Chris's muscles, Ezra drew his fingers to his mouth and nuzzled them, his breath soughing across Chris's skin.

Chris released his own gusting sigh and shifted onto his back. With the arm curved under Ezra, he tugged at him in invitation. After a moment's hesitation, Ezra rolled over and fit himself against Chris's side. Ezra laid his head close to his on the pillow and ran his hand across Chris's chest to a light hold over his ribs on his far side. Chris curled his arm around him and stared at the ceiling, grounding himself back in the needs of the present, not past pain.

"The choice is in how you deal with the shit that happens." He ran his hand down Ezra's back, feeling the roughness of dried sweat overlaying the smooth flesh.

"Oh, and you did such a sterling job of handling disaster." The acid in Ezra's voice could have scored copper.

He tightened his arm. "Maybe not, but I chose what I did, Ezra." Their discordant breathing filled the air. Chris made a deliberate effort and gentled his voice. "There's always a choice of some sort and you choose according to what kind of man you are. The only thing you don't get a bitching choice about is not making a decision one way or another."

Ezra gave a thin laugh and Chris closed his eyes, knowing firsthand the irony. Ezra swallowed audibly and lifted his head to settle it on Chris's shoulder, hot and heavy and uncomfortable, his breath moist across Chris's throat. Chris skimmed his hand up Ezra's back, over the boney knob at the top of his spine, across his nape and into his short hair, spreading his fingers to cradle Ezra's head. Ezra circled a finger around a sore spot on Chris's collarbone, without touching it or awaking hurt.

"Doctor Constanz says the brain softening she's already suffered is likely to worsen. Doctors Bailey and Smithfield concur. They each have their own proposed methods of treatment, but none of them, when pressed for particulars, offer any hope of actual benefit." Ezra's drawl dropped to a whisper. "All the king's horses and all the king's men...."

His breathing was the only sound for a moment. His voice turned clipped, though his eyes were unfocused in a stare into the shadows across the room. "Most of the time, she doesn't know me at all. There's no spark in her eyes, no acknowledgement, no...awareness: of me, of who I might be, of what on Earth I might be doing sitting there talking to her. She's unfailingly polite, with a--" he swallowed painfully "--a semblance of her old social manner, as though I'm an unknown guest who's had the temerity to invite myself into her parlor, but must, despite my own shocking ill manners, be entertained appropriately." Bitterness harshened the final words.

Chris stroked his fingers through Ezra's hair before holding his head again. Ezra crooked his leg over Chris's thigh, settling more of his weight on him. His voice had evened out when he spoke again.

"Other times, she stares at me as though there's some niggling doubt, something telling her she perhaps _should_ know me. I speak to her, I call her by name, I mention people and places long familiar to both of us, but she either shies away from me or stares at me blankly. She knows me less than the nurse I hired to care for her." He lifted his head to look down at Chris with a gaze that could cut. "She doesn't know me most of the time, Chris. And when she does--" His breathing hitched and his eyes turned from knives to wounds. "When she does...."

Ezra jerked away, swinging his legs off the bed and hunching down, his arms wrapped around his middle. Chris rested a hand on Ezra's heaving back, knowing better than to offer more. Ezra knew what was available; it was his choice in this, too, to decide what he needed, how much comfort he could find at any moment.

With his head tucked down on his chest, Ezra's voice was muffled. "She clings to me. On the rare instances when she knows me, she clutches at me with such fear. There's such fear. I'd never imagined-- She's never been afraid before, not like that. Not in all my life have I seen her look anything like that. She's never been helpless, or...so frighteningly vulnerable. Whatever happened, however hard or painful it was, she was always able to handle it. Everything. Anything at all.

"She begs me to take her away, as though there's some haven I could take her to where everything would be all right if only I were willing to do it. Then she gets angry because I won't help her, because I--because she thinks I'm just ignoring her pleading and her demands. Sometimes, she even cries." His back trembled under Chris's hand. "She wants me to make things right, and I can't. I can't." He turned his head so Chris could see his profile, raw and desperate. "Can I?"

Chris sat up and moved behind him, wrapping both arms around him. Ezra grabbed him with a hold hard enough to bruise, his fingers leaving more marks to add to the tally they'd both gathered over the past eight days. He pressed his lips to the join of Ezra's shoulder and neck, then settled his cheek against the side of Ezra's head, looking into his own crucible.

"You know the answer, Ezra. You've known it all along."

The stench of scorched timbers and flesh carrying to them on the breeze, spurring him to gallop the last short distance home with Buck close beside him. The windmill and empty corral untouched, whole and normal looking on that placid summer's day, but the house between them a smoking, stinking ruin. In the remains, unearthed with frantic hands burned bloody, two black lumps seared of features and clothes, hair and fingers and toes gone, the ends of the joints showing smoke-darkened bone.

Sanity gone, and life and hope, in a glut of fury and denial he carried for years.

He buried his face in Ezra's neck, steadying himself with Ezra's scent and solidity. Ezra's chest was heaving under his arms, but his heartbeat was slowing. Ezra leaned back against him and he absorbed the weight, anchoring Ezra and savagely glad of Ezra's need for him providing an anchor in return.

"The staff at the private hospital Doctor Constanz oversees is trained to deal with precisely these--"

Chris felt Ezra lift his hand and opened his eyes to see him make a helpless gesture.

"--untreatable conditions. I thought it would be...kind to arrange matters so she could stay in her home, among the familiarity of her own rooms and possessions, and that perhaps, in that environment, she'd regain something of what she's lost. But most of the time, she doesn't recognize anything or, or anyone. And when she does, it's worse, it's--" He gnawed on his lip. "When she does, it terrifies her with confused glimmerings of what she's lost, of the life she seems to sense is just out of reach and can't recapture no matter how she struggles for it. And she's a danger to herself if she's not watched constantly because she goes into the street, attempting to find her way home--even though she already is.

"The hospital will...will at least provide her a safe and comfortable refuge for her remaining time, which, which appears might not be long." His voice lowered so Chris had to strain to hear. "Or which might continue for a very long time."

Ezra turned to him. With awkward movements on the narrow bed, Chris drew him down to lie flat and settled them together. Ezra's breath was warm against his cheek.

"I can't rescue her, Chris. I thought, surely, if one tries, if one has the will, there must be a way. But there isn't. She lives in a world of shadows, her memory mostly gone about the most basic matters and confusion and uncertainty hemming her in. I can't salvage even a modicum of a meaningful life for her from the bones of what she has left. All I can do for her is give her what she needs, not ever what she wants."

He rubbed a circle on Ezra's hip and gripped him with his other arm while the taint of Ezra's pain, sharp and new, mingled with his own seasoned hurt.

Ezra's voice was a broken murmur against Chris's throat. "You should have stopped me. All these days, no kindness, just cruelty meted out to ones already suffering, and no hope for either of them no matter how I tried to deny it. I've been no help to her and my attempts to make that creature less...afraid, less lost inside its own circle of hell, has only extended its hell."

Chris stared over Ezra's head into the past. "You knew the choice to make, Ezra. You just needed the time to come to it on your own."

Buck riding with him after they buried Sarah and Adam, even while Chris did his damnedest to drive him away. Buck shadowing him for months, sticking his heels in with mulish insistence, protecting his back every way he could and giving him time to wrestle with the restraints of a world gone black while trying to keep him from disintegrating.

He ran a hand up Ezra's back and curled his fingers over his nape. Ezra's neck was cool, the skin soft in contrast to the spikiness of his short hair against Chris's fingertips. He feathered his thumb against the tender area behind Ezra's ear and felt a pang akin to guilt for the sereneness that loosened his muscles and made his eyes slide closed.

Ezra turned his head to rest with his face pressed against Chris's shoulder. Chris shifted minutely to explore the burn of Ezra's stubble against his skin; Ezra would soon be back to his meticulously groomed self, all smooth cheeks and shorn nails and the smells of soap and pomade and a voice that turned ragged only with sexual heat.

"I've hurt you, too, Chris, repeatedly over these past days--and you let me." Ezra's voice was accusatory, with an acerbic tone Chris welcomed as another sign of returning normalcy. Ezra flattened his hand over a bruise on Chris's chest, next to his nipple.

Chris tightened his hold on him. "I've done worse and lived with it."

Blood darkening the dirt of Dodge City's Front Street as a seventeen-year-old kid sprawled dead because he crossed Chris's path when Chris was furious at the world and had no room in him for any feelings or needs but his own. He'd put other men down in the years before and since that day with a bullet in an arm or leg or shoulder; he'd worked to acquire the ability to kill, but also simply to defend--himself or others--at need. But he hadn't been in a state to deal with Jackie Pinder that way, or offer the boy any grace at all.

"Sometimes we just need time to get our head screwed on straight. You'll be all right."

"It's not about me, Chris."

Chris smiled wryly above Ezra's head tucked under his chin, where Ezra couldn't see him. He hooked the blanket up and covered Ezra's back before the coolness could turn to cold, then settled himself for another uncomfortable night with Ezra pillowed on his chest. The lantern was still burning on the table and he was itchy with sweat and come, but he could ignore them. Ezra was more relaxed than he'd been since his last return from Saint Louis, showing a kind of peacefulness, or maybe just resignation, of his own at last. They might actually rest tonight. The storm was over, though some of the cracks that had opened up in Ezra would probably never be plastered over, like the holes in himself.

But he reckoned the two of them had survived well enough, all things told.

"Nothing will ever be the same again." The ordinarily honeyed drawl was raw.

Chris's eyes flinched shut. An image of two crosses weathered by years of sun, rain, and scouring winds flared in the darkness. He turned his head to brush his lips across Ezra's temple and grounded himself in the present.

:::::::

Chris woke to the flick of a tongue against the corner of his mouth, followed by kisses dotted across his jaw, up his cheek, tenderly against one closed eye, around the whorl of his ear and down his throat. He smiled and heard a hum as Ezra continued down to his chest, hands joining his mouth scattering kisses against all of Chris's pleasure spots. Chris kept his eyes closed, aware of a brighter light against his lids than the lantern that had burned all night, and smiled as he ran a hand over Ezra's rumpled hair down to the muscles flexing between his shoulder blades as Ezra curled down on the bed. Sweet bitching Jesus, nobody he'd ever been with knew how to wake a man up better than Ezra, not the fanciest whore he'd forked out cash for, not even sexy, dirty-faced Maria in Purgatorio.

He spread his legs in the narrow space available, opening his thighs to a stroking, insistent hand while making another reminder in the back of his brain to get a wider bed. Then Ezra's tongue licked his balls and Ezra's hand closed around his cock and all coherent thought fled. He twisted his free hand in the sheet, siphoning tension into that clutch so his hand on Ezra's back remained a caress. Ezra's shift in position made Chris's hand slide to his lower back; he rubbed his thumb over the jut of Ezra's tailbone under downy skin.

The gentleness of Ezra's touch, of his hands and his mouth, awoke the familiar sense of Ezra he'd missed over the past days. He looked at the curve of Ezra's body over him, protective of Chris's comfort and pleasure, and the cold lump in his gut he'd been living with loosened. He dared believe the worst was truly over and Ezra would survive; scarred, but intact.

He slid his hand to Ezra's arm and tugged until Ezra lifted his head and looked up at him. Ezra's hand was still wrapped around Chris's cock, pale fingers banding the red of his erection. He jerked his head and pulled until Ezra unbent his back and shifted around to lie full length against him, body half-sprawled atop him. He pulled Ezra up to lie fully over him and cupped his ass in both hands; a thrust up with his hips and Ezra, with the affinity they'd developed over the months they'd been doing this, gathered his rhythm and notched up the speed. Then it was his hardness and Ezra's kindling heat along their lengths in the growing slickness between their bellies. He let Ezra set the pace and sank into the feeling of being home Ezra's strong hands gave him, as arousing as Ezra's weight on him and his stuttered breathing and the sharp press of his hipbones. Ezra even spoke a little, urgent and intoxicating; it was a pale imitation of his usual litany of cajolement and demands during sex, but a sign of returning normalcy that exhilarated Chris as he closed his hands hard on Ezra's ass and grinned at the groan it wrung from him.

When Chris came first, Ezra's gasp was the loudest, as Ezra commonly, when he wasn't mazed with pain, provided most of the sounds during sex. Still too silent, but when Chris snaked a hand, shaky with orgasm, between them and palmed Ezra's hardness, Ezra drawled an expletive he made sound like a caress and tumbled into completion, and Chris's exhilaration peaked.

Ezra sank down on him chest to chest, the pound of his heart vibrating into Chris through the layers of flesh and bone separating them. He closed his arms around Ezra's heaving back and licked a drop of sweat from his neck.

Ezra rolled off him and pulled him onto his side with that deceptive strength he had. He let Ezra settle them the way he wanted and held him in one arm. He rested his other hand against Ezra's chest over his heart, missing its thump, wanting to feel it as it slowed to normal.

He reckoned the two of them would be able to get back to normal now, too; or at least as bitching normal as he and Ezra ever would be. Since losing Sarah, he'd put aside the ideas of normal she'd led him to appreciate.

Ezra Standish didn't have a normal bone in his body, and that suited him fine.

The sun coming in the eastern window had crawled an inch across the floor when Ezra sighed and pushed himself away, which wasn't all the time Chris wanted, but was longer than he'd expected to get. He stretched his cramped legs as Ezra got up and staggered to the stove, stopping at the table to put out the lantern. Ezra put a kettle of water on to warm and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. His skin gleamed in the dawn light against the dark wall behind him like a vein of quartz in granite. His hair was matted and he stood in an ungraceful pose with his muscular legs wide set. He was as different from the various women Chris had been attracted to in his life as anyone could be.

Then Ezra dropped his hands and looked straight at him as though he knew Chris was watching him. Ezra smiled, looking unusually wistful and fragile, and Chris's heart lurched. He glanced away. When he looked back moments later, Ezra was staring at him with his head cocked to one side and an understanding that surpassed the chatter that had been muted in him these past days. Ezra nodded as their eyes met, then turned to lift the kettle from the stove. He poured water into a large tin bowl and washed himself with a rag, sliding the cloth quickly but fastidiously into all his nooks and crannies. Focused on the practical, he was abruptly all gracefulness as he lifted one foot after another onto a chair and wiped the cloth over his torso and limbs.

Chris joined him and wet another rag. He washed Ezra's broad shoulders and down his back and between his buttocks. Ezra gave him a strained smile as the two of them finished together and Ezra straightened. Chris turned away to wash out the cloth. He applied it to himself as Ezra poured warm water from the kettle into a dish and shaved. They moved around each other in the confined space with the ease of custom, but in a silence only the _pruk-pruk_ of a raven outside broke. Ezra's unnatural quiet unsettled him still, but he had faith they'd be all right now.

He pulled on his drawers, pants, and boots and went out the back door to the outhouse. When he returned, Ezra was buttoning his vest. His expression was somber, but he met Chris's smile with clear eyes and managed a smile in return. Chris stood in front of him and touched his wrist as Ezra fastened the last button.

"Want me to do it?"

Ezra turned his hand over to squeeze Chris's fingers gently before shaking his head and letting go. He took his coat from the hook and donned it, straightened his vest, and put on his hat. He looked dapper, confident, and sleekly successful, until he raised his head and the tired hollowness of his eyes could be glimpsed in the shadow of the hat brim.

Ezra lifted the cloth lying over the remaining bones from last night. They looked dry, but they had generous portions of meat clinging to them. He took the plate and opened the door; before he could reach for his saddlebags, Chris stooped and picked them up. With a brief smile, Ezra straightened his shoulders and marched outside.

Chris fetched Ezra's tackle from the lean-to at the side of the shack and went into the corral to saddle Ezra's horse. He kept his back to the woods, occupying himself with preparing the animal for its journey. He'd saddled it and was tightening the latigos holding Ezra's bedroll behind the saddle when a shot rang out behind him and the dog gave a high-pitched squeal. His hands jerked. A second shot instantly followed and the yelp cut off to silence. He held the horn with one hand and stroked the other down the gelding's strong neck, murmuring to it as it tossed its head. The horse quieted and he fit the saddlebags in place and released it, watching as it trotted across the corral to stand near a roan trade-off mount Ezra's horse was fond of.

Chris took a cheroot from his pocket and struck a match against the fence. He turned around, drawing the tobacco into his lungs, and watched Ezra dig. He was standing in the shadow of the trees, but he'd removed his coat. His white shirtsleeves provided a pristine contrast to the forest's deep green backdrop as he bent to thrust the shovel into the ground and lifted dirt up, bending and lifting in a quick, fluid movement at odds with his trumpeted disdain for laboring. Chris had finished the cheroot before Ezra straightened and leaned the shovel against the fence next to his coat. Ezra moved a few feet away and bent low to drag the dog's carcass to the hole. Chris hooked his thumbs into the front of his pants and continued to watch as Ezra took the shovel and bent and lifted again with the same efficient speed to fill in the grave.

Ezra didn't pause when he was done, just took his coat and the shovel and walked straight-backed along the path beside the corral. His eyes snapped to Chris when he was partway along. Chris held them and Ezra didn't look away as he walked; Chris watched as tension leaked out of Ezra's shoulders until they rounded with tiredness. Ezra managed a wan smile as he came parallel with him; Chris nodded, and their eyes broke contact as Ezra bent over to lean the shovel against the fence, then veered across the yard to the shack, disappearing inside.

He rounded up Ezra's horse, bridled it and led it from the corral. Ezra emerged from the shack a few minutes later with his coat on and his tie straightened. He took the reins and swung up into the saddle as Chris stroked the animal. Ezra settled himself and gathered the reins into his right hand, resting it on his thigh. He looked down and touched Chris's cheek with cool fingers that smelled of soap.

"How long will you be gone?"

Ezra gestured vaguely and shrugged. He looked vulnerable again, and his eyes blinked away. Chris closed his hand on Ezra's calf, hard enough to be felt through the high boot. After a few moments, Ezra smoothed out his breathing with the willed control that was as much a part of him as his slickness with cards and looked at Chris.

"I'll be back." Ezra's voice was steady as his eyes.

Chris nodded acknowledgement. He squeezed Ezra's leg and let go, taking a step back. "I'll be here."

Ezra touched the brim of his hat, then reined his mount to the east and geed it away. Chris lit another cheroot and watched until Ezra disappeared from sight behind a dip in the trail.

:::::::

Chris reached town in time for lunch at the saloon. He stood at the bar and ate black beans and pork, sopping up the grease with pieces torn from a gritty biscuit and washing it all down with coffee black as tar. No one approached or spoke a word to him; even the keep, who usually had something to say about everything or nothing, filled Chris's orders in silence. When he was done, he bought a beer and took it outside. He leaned against a post outside the batwing doors to survey the street. The town was peaceful, with the quiet of citizens moving industriously about their business in good fellowship with their neighbors. A breeze stirred the surface of the water in the horse trough, making the reflection of the saloon's upper story and the cloud-dotted sky ripple. He lifted his head and sniffed the air, but it was as dry as the sandy street. The ride to the railhead at Ridge City should be an easy one today, not taxing even for a man with a lot on his mind.

He settled at an empty table on the boardwalk outside the saloon. He tilted his head back against the clapboard siding and slid his shoulders down until he was comfortable; nothing immediately needed his attention, as far as he could tell, and he could do with a couple of hours of idleness to let the last of the accumulated tightness in his muscles seep away. He casually watched through slitted eyes the comings and goings of men into the saloon, not shifting position except occasionally to sip his beer. Nobody ventured near him. He'd finished the beer and was considering stirring himself to get a whiskey when Buck's long, lean shadow fell across him. Buck stepped over his legs and slid into the chair at the other side of the table, slapping down a battered hickory box with a thump and rattle.

"Hey, Chris."

He nodded without moving, but pulled himself upright in his chair when Buck opened the box and arranged the checkers on the board on the table between them. Chris gave a wolfish grin when he saw Buck had given him the black pieces.

"Don't give me that look, old pard, I just have a special requirement for a handicap today. I'm plumb worn out from a night spent entertaining Miss Georgia and her double-jointed legs. Whoo-boy, let me tell you, that gal sure knows how to give a man an all-fired exalting experience, yes, sirree."

And, in vintage Buck fashion, he launched into an outrageous tale about the talented Miss Georgia, whoever she might be--if she existed at all outside Buck's fancy. Buck tended to be a mite more protective of the reputations of women whose beds he actually parked his boots under. But listening to Buck spout, his voice rich with expression and delight, was an easy way to pass a lazy hour. Chris rolled his head as his knotted muscles relaxed a dab more.

He'd won the first game and Buck was winning the second when Buck dropped his voice to an undertone. "Vin's been worrying about that dog."

Chris raised an eyebrow and drew a cheroot from his shirt pocket. He used the time it took to strike a match and light the tobacco to quell the spike of annoyance. Buck maintained a waiting silence, his gaze switching between the board and Chris.

Chris drew smoke deep into his lungs and blew it out slowly, turning his head so the breeze would waft it away from both of them. He moved a man to the king's row and let the familiarity of Buck's frown at the board blunt his irritation so he could keep his voice mild.

"Seems like Vin's not the only person trying to mind my business."

A blind man couldn't have failed to notice the pool of stillness that spread around him on his daily visits to town, following him up the street and into the livery and the saloon. While he'd been sitting here this afternoon, more than a few townsfolk had shot glances his way, and they weren't friendly ones; and most had steered a wide berth around him. Only a few folk had had the guts to step up to him and speak their minds outright about the dog--Mary prominent among them--but a passel of them muttered and stared all around the fringes of wherever he was.

He'd lived with whispers and stares for too many years as a shootist to pay attention to them now. As long as people kept their thinking at a distance from him, he had no trouble ignoring them.

Buck gave him a straight look, playfulness shed like a blanket on a hot night. "Well, I guess no one can understand just why you're letting a dumb creature suffer like that for no reason."

Chris contemplated the board for longer than needed since Buck had maneuvered him into making a forced capture that would leave Chris's men on the left undefended. He made the move and leaned back in his chair, aware all the while of Buck's unwavering regard. He lifted his eyes with deliberation and returned the look.

"I've told you before, Buck, my private life ain't for conversation for you."

"I ain't been conversing about it with nobody but you."

It never failed to amaze him, even after thirteen years of knowing Buck, how that velvety voice of his could slide from sweet warmth one minute to steel the next. He offered Buck an unamused smile.

"And Vin."

Buck's eyes didn't dip. "Vin's the one that brought it up--though he ain't the only one thinking on it."

"What people think ain't no more a concern of mine than my business is anybody's to talk about." He let the silence hang between them for the length of a last pull on the cheroot and the time it took to grind out the butt on the boardwalk under his boot. "I thought we'd sorted that out."

The smell of shaving soap and cigar smoke. The razor cutting into Buck's throat, mingling drops of red into the white foam while Buck's eyes grew bleak as hell's maw.

"Yeah, I reckon we did, at that." Buck pursed his lips and looked at the board. He jumped two of Chris's men, punching the pieces on the board with enough force to make all of them quiver.

"Hey, fellows." JD hopped up onto the boardwalk and hovered over them, bouncing on his heels and casting a wobbling shadow over the table. He studied the board. "Who's winning? Got a wager on it?"

"It's just a friendly game, JD." The steel hadn't left Buck's voice yet and drew JD's stare.

Chris grinned with actual amusement this time.

"Oh." JD's eyes roved between them, then he shrugged and his voice lifted into its usual cheerful tone. "So, anyone want a beer? Buck? Chris?"

"Whiskey." Chris flipped JD his empty glass.

Buck cleared his throat and spoke in a more normal voice. "Yeah, I'll have another beer." He drained his glass and handed it to JD. "Thanks, kid."

JD disappeared inside. Buck focused his attention on the board and completed his win in two quick moves. Without a word or look at Chris, he set the pieces up for the deciding game. His and Buck's playing was always friendly, all right, but they always wanted to know which of them was going to come out on top.

Josiah strolled over to join them, dragging a chair with a screech along the boardwalk from the other side of the saloon entrance. He paused to wave over the tops of the doors at somebody inside before seating himself next to Chris. He cast a disinterested eye over the play and pulled a book from his pocket.

"Nice day." He looked around the street. "Real nice and quiet."

"I could stand more days like this." Buck shot Chris a smile as he captured the first of Chris's men.

Buck had shoved the momentary unease between them to the background, the way he could always depend on Buck to do.

Josiah opened his book. "I'm with you there, brother. Nathan and I should be able to finish the west section of the roof in another day if we get enough free hours, and no rain."

"Sure don't look like rain," JD banged through the batwings with hands and arms full, "but the twinge in old Henry's shoulder he's been grouching about might know more'n we do again." He set shot glasses in front of Chris and Josiah, a beer in front of Buck, and leaned against the railing with his own beer glass of milk. "Where is Nathan, anyway?"

"He'll be along. Just wanted to wash up and change his shirt." Josiah let the book fall onto his thigh with a finger holding his place. "We figured on having supper together in an hour or so. Gonna join us, Chris?"

The acceptance these men offered, whatever each of them felt about the dog, was a better gut-warmer than whiskey. He took a moment to relish the feeling of it along his nerves.

"Thanks, Josiah, but I reckon I'll ride back out after I pick up some supplies. I'm gonna have an early night. There don't seem to be much happening around here that needs an eye kept on it."

"Anyone seen Ezra?" JD, wiping milk off his upper lip with the back of his hand, looked between each of them. "I saw him ride out last night, but I haven't seen him at all today and I don't think he's set foot in the saloon, which ain't like him. I can't recall a single day in all the time I've known him that he couldn't be found there, if he's in town."

Buck shrugged and Josiah shook his head. Chris ignored the question, looking along the street to the hazed outline of the hills in the distance.

"I was thinking maybe his ma's sick again and maybe that's where he's gone."

"Could be." Buck took a healthy swallow of beer and made his next move. "Ezra ain't been forthcoming about much lately. Generally can't shut him up when it's something to do with Maude, so I guess that could be a bad sign."

JD frowned. "She's been sick an awful lot. This is the, what, the fourth time he's gone to see her just in the last few months? I sure hope she gets better soon. Ezra's been looking sort of twitchy."

After a silence, Chris said, "She's permanent sick, JD. She won't be getting better."

The Red-Eye in Josiah's glass shone amber as he lifted it, but he didn't drink. His voice was a deep murmur of regret. "That's a damned shame. Maude's a fine woman, and one of a kind." He turned his head to the south and his eyes lifted to the vicinity of the church steeple visible against the sky above Bucklin's large sign.

Chris blinked his eyes down to the board and studied the play, having no more to add than any of the rest of them.

:::::::

Vin stopped at Chris's place on his way back to town to drop off a brace of rabbits he bagged on the trail. He'd been staying out at the reservation for a few days, joining Jonah-Eh and Chanu and other bucks in a hunt for big game to be salted and dried for the tribe for winter. The chanting and drums of the ceremonies to bless the hunt and celebrate its success were still sounding in his blood, reminder of the only other time in his adult life he'd spent a long spell in one spot. Now he needed to slide back into the rhythm of his life in Four Corners and with the men he rode with, and the best place to start was to see Chris.

The yard was empty when he rode in, but Chris's black was in the corral with the three other geldings he kept out here. Vin loosened the cinch on his saddle and turned his horse in with them. About to head to the house, he stopped to look at the woods. He hesitated, then gave in to the pull and walked down inside the corral. He panned his eyes over the trees as he approached, but couldn't catch a glimpse of a ghostly shape hovering in the shadows, or any movement at all. The first thing he spotted when he reached the far fence was a small grave. His eyes closed momentarily, startling him with the strength of the relief flooding over him, before he studied it properly.

The grave was covered in rocks to keep out predators. The path beside the corral was too hard to see any prints on, but he could see Chris's boot prints, marked at the heel with a gouge from the spur where his feet sank into the soil, on the softer ground all around the grave itself. Chris must have gathered the rocks from the bed of the stream that ran a quarter mile inside the woods; he could see Chris's prints leading into the trees and back out. Looked like the rain they'd had at the reservation had touched here, too, and Chris had placed the rocks after it had washed away from the sandy soil any signs of struggle the dog made in its dying. Knowing Chris, its end would have been quick and sure.

At least its bones would rest undisturbed, with more protection than the creature'd been granted in all its blighted life, which was no value to the animal now, but made Vin feel buoyant as he turned around and strode to the shack with long, loose steps.

Chris was sitting at the table cleaning his rifle when Vin knocked on the door and pushed it open. The calm nod Chris gave him let him know Chris had known it was him from the moment he'd ridden in. Nothing much got past Chris, and that lifted Vin's spirits even more, the sheer familiarity of Chris a balm to a spot deep inside him that had been feeling more bruised than he'd realized. Chris's warm smile eased the last of his own tension.

He slapped the skinned carcasses down on the end of the table. "Brought you supper." He pulled stalks of wild mint and a handful of mallow leaves from the pocket of his coat and dropped them next to the rabbits.

"Appreciate it. You want to prepare 'em, I'll cook 'em."

Vin shucked his coat and pulled his knife. He wiped it against his thigh and smiled. "Ain't gonna pass up an offer like that."

He glanced at Chris as he worked, noting the easing of the tense lines around Chris's eyes. Chris looked better rested than he had for a piece. They worked in companionable silence until Chris got up to lean the rifle against the wall beside the door and put a pan to heat on the stove. Vin left the readied meat and herbs for Chris to deal with and went out to take the saddle from his horse, hefting its weight into the lean-to with a grunt. He stretched until the ache of too many hours in the saddle let up, then gave his horse a rubdown. Chris passed him with a bucket of water he dumped in the corral trough just as Vin finished and let his gelding loose. While Chris forked some hay over the fence into the corral, Vin paused to look around the small spread sprouting in the wilderness: Chris's handiwork, shaped from Chris's desire and with promise of being a damned fine place to call home if Chris stayed on and kept it going.

He fell into step with Chris as they finished the chores and headed for the house and the supper that was simmering on the stove.

"Glad to see that critter's been took care of." He needed to say it, to acknowledge the incident one last time before they put it behind them for good.

Chris shot him a slantwise look. His eyes were narrowed and his face was unreadable as a slate, but that was typical of Chris. Chris had his secrets and his own reasons for doing things, but he was still Chris, he was always Chris, who would always do the decent thing and take care of what needed to be done, even if it was in his own time.

Vin smiled as he followed Chris inside the shack, both of them stamping their boots on the already dusty floor to dislodge the dirt. He felt a warmth inside his chest, like finding his way home after fearing for a time the trail had been overgrown.

Everything could get back now to being exactly the same as it used to be.

**Author's Note:**

> "God moves in a mysterious way" is from William Cowper's poem of that title, published 1779 in _Olney Hymns_.


End file.
